The work of
Jim Houser is mentioned on my blog already a number of times since I like his work a lot. He had some collaberations with a painter called
Margaret Kilgallen and she said:
"I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the
world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And
in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything
mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to
perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect
because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's
interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot
of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it
straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it
might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the
line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is."
Those who know me know I will try to stay away from a sewingmachine and will do just about everything to not use it and like Margaret I do things by hand. Some years ago I found these leafs painted by Margaret and fell in love with them and somehow they keep resurfacing.
So when I found a discarded curtain some time ago it were these two memories that made me buy it.
And
this song comes to mind now which is very special to me since it remind me of a special episode in my life.
In the embroidery-class of Karen we are encouraged to make samples. Never done that before, normally I just start with some notes and some doodles and that's it. But since I do understand now why Karen put an emphasis on it, I'm gonna give it a try. So on a sheet of paper I painted some old and some new symbols and you can see the two little copies I made of Margaret's leafs and the sample I made so far.
On page 49 of the book Celtic, Viking & Anglo-Saxon Embroidery of Jan Messent you can find the image above which is a stitch called the
Ceylon stitch, instructions are under the link. This seemed to be the perfect stitch for what I was aiming for but I had to make some alterations because of the width of my sample. So my starting line is made with a stitch called backstitch and I started and ended each row simple because otherwise a lot of thread would be hanging at the back.
Still need some practice with this stitch but it gave me what I wanted to have. Well this is how far I got and now I have to get back in motion again.
Have a wonderful day and make the most of the glorious weather we have at the moment.
Elizabeth